Boiling Point: Finding the formula for perfect barbecue sauce

Friday

Feb 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 29, 2008 at 2:06 PM

We were driving through North Carolina to the sea. We were starving, but needed a better reason to stop than that. I passed a hand-scrawled sign, “Pig Pickin T-day.” I was a half mile past it when it sank in. I U-turned and burned back, followed the traffic and wound up at a country fire station.

Jim Hillibish

We were driving through North Carolina to the sea. We were starving, but needed a better reason to stop than that.

I passed a hand-scrawled sign, “Pig Pickin T-day.” I was a half mile past it when it sank in. I U-turned my MG and burned back, followed the traffic and wound up at a country fire station.

Three pigs were turning over charcoal and hickory coals. Whole pigs, 60-pounders. You paid your three dollars, sat down on a picnic table, and they kept the pork and cornbread and fried peppers coming until you burst.

The meat arrived on giant platters in big pieces. You’d “pick” your fill. You had to overeat. Not hogging the hog was a local insult.

Serious pickers

I watched the cooks. These volunteer firefighters were-mild-mannered farmers and the mayor by day, and loud, cackling, beer-infused barbecue men by Friday night.

It’s a celebration going way back. Pigs were perfect Southern food. You’d let the creature roam around eating garbage or whatever for free, then capture him and, well, do a pig pickin’ for everybody.

The meat arrived with Coke bottles of red fluid labeled “Hot,” “Hotter” and “You Won’t Believe This.” The sauce was smoky and rich, the pig moist and perfect.

The Lord’s Salvation Combined Chorale offered “God Dips His Pen in My Soul” as I dipped my fingers into the sauce and discovered heaven.

You learn quickly to never ask a Tarheel barbecue man for his sauce recipe.

They’ll tell you everything else, but the sauce is closely held. Pig is pig, any place. But the sauce, “nothing like it any place else,” is the big draw.

I cajoled, I begged, I offered an excessive donation to the fire department -- no deal.

“It’s a secret sauce.”

Well, I wasn’t born yesterday. I spent my time tasting and reverse engineering the flavors. The ingredients were easy to ID: sweet and sour, vinegar and brown sugar, garlic, ketchup and pepper sauce. Anybody could guess that. The exact proportions were the impossible part, the secret of secret sauce.

Finding the formula

It took years of messing around, but I believe I’ve hit on it, my favorite barbecue sauce.

It has depth, well-defined flavors, and I eat it on everything but my corn flakes. It screams “pig pickin’,” “chicken pickin’,” “crappie pickin’,” whatever.

Incidentally, this is good on anything from the oven, including green beans and meat loaf.

So will I share it with you? I may rot in hell, but yes. I know where my cornbread is buttered.